[10M] Advice for Ra-den

[Deleted]

So today we pretty much blew our first 15 tries or so, because of way too many stupid fails. This is why tomorrow we really want to make those last few tries count.
Therefore I'm wondering if there's anything that I did significantly wrong, or if there are any useful tips you guys could give me.

My character:
Spec: Destruction, GoSup
ilvl: 534
Haste: ~8.1k
Mastery: ~9k
Crit: ~3.2k
All stats given are in a completely unbuffed state.

The fight:
I keep my pet on him and simply spam Incinerate on Ra-den while keeping RoF up at all times. A few seconds before the balls spawn I stack my Backdraft up to 6 to get max burst out of my CBs.
Whenever Havoc is ready I use it to split my CBs on balls/crackling add and Ra-den.
Right now we are kind of struggling with the balls and sometimes they get through, especially when one of our range dps has to be outside of the camp for the unstable vita and can't deal any damage to the incomming ball, because he's not in range.
That's why everyone in our raid keeps one of his strongest CDs (Dark Soul, Ascendance, Stampede, etc.) to counter the bad RNG and always have at least someone with a strong dps output.

My questions:
1. Are there any obvious mistakes to my and my raid group's playstyle that you can see right away?
2. Should I reforge into max crit? I simmed myself and it tells me that it would be a clear dps loss in overall dps, but maybe still a good idea to gain more burst?
3. What do you recommend to outplay bad RNG like range dps not being able to attack the incomming balls? (We're playing with 4 ranged/2 melee)
4. Do you think it's a good idea to delay personal dps CDs, like we do it, to always have someone pop his strongest CD? I gues I don't have to tell you that this is resulting in a noticeable overall dps loss on the boss (especially for me).
5. Any other advice?


Thanks guys.

[Solial]

Raid Comp?

[Chrispotter]

I think you will find the most success in going Full mastery with Go Sac. When an orb is about ~3 seconds away from being spawned, use Conflag x2 on boss, havoc on boss, then 2x Chaos bolt on orb, finish with shadowburn or a 3rd CB if it is not under 20%.

I have not done ra den on 10 man, but on 25 it is possible to have some people not be in the rotation at all (about 1-2 people). If there is a way to not have a person in the rotation on 10 man, make it yourself or an arcane mage.
try not to have 2 dps out at one time, just 1 dps/1healer out at a time.

[Deleted]

Although not very keen on warlocks, if your melee aren't helping killing balls you are doing something wrong.

Which I'm assuming is why they are getting through since after item upgrades and what not the fight's DPS requirements are somewhat trivial.

Therefore saving DPS CDs intentionally for balls isn't necessary at this point.

[Deleted]

I think you will find the most success in going Full mastery with Go Sac. When an orb is about ~3 seconds away from being spawned, use Conflag x2 on boss, havoc on boss, then 2x Chaos bolt on orb, finish with shadowfury or a 3rd CB if it is not under 20%.

I have not done ra den on 10 man, but on 25 it is possible to have some people not be in the rotation at all (about 1-2 people). If there is a way to not have a person in the rotation on 10 man, make it yourself or an arcane mage.
try not to have 2 dps out at one time, just 1 dps/1healer out at a time.

This is actually what I'm reforged into, since my main spec is demonology. So no arguing here.
But how come you'd recommend going with GoSac instead of GoSup? What's the point?

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 11:38 PM ----------

Raid Comp?

1x prot pala

1x disc priest
1x heal shaman
1x heal druid

1x arcane mage (no meta gem!)
1x sv hunter (no meta gem!)
1x boomkin (no meta gem!)
1x destro warlock
1x unholy dk
1x enhancement shaman
even though some don't have the meta gem, their ilvl itself isn't bad at all (530 at least)

[Solial]

Try to make it so that there is always 1 dps and 1 healer going out, at least when a ball is going to spawn. Disc priest should be dpsing 100% of the time if you're 3 healing it. Our first kill we had a holy priest, disc priest, and a holy paladin, and the holy priest said he would only occasionally cast a PoM or a renew and pretty much spammed smite, 2 healed it the next couple kills. The melee dps can, and should, switch to the orbs. My guild runs 3 melee dps (ret pally is 2nd tank) and they would all switch, people soaking would run a little further away to make sure it wasn't chained to them.

The mage can soak the lightning 3 times with alter time and ice block. This will allow you to kill an extra orb and hopefully push last phase with only 3 stacks. If you don't have the dps (three healers), don't have melee soak to get the extra up time on the boss to push him quicker.

Last phase is pretty much a free win if you get there with 5 stacks or less and everyone alive.

[Deleted]

All ranged players should have Macroed /target Essence of Anima with some spell(as warlock you can combine it with Chaos Bolt), it helps so much and can save few seconds of precious time when compared to manual targeting. And your tank can move the boss little bit away from the balls to give you ~1 second more time.

[Werst]

A macro is helpful (can make one to only target the orb you want to kill in p2 as well). I'd recommend gosac with deep mastery build. Your dps doesn't matter per se (on the boss) if an orb ever gets through. Also 99% of the time you don't get to shadowburn due to client/server. You can adjust your raid's rotation so ranged dps tend to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I went with AV but KJC is an option to use a CB on the move. Just save your conflags for double conflag/double CB on the orb. That's about all you can do. So if it still gets through its probably someone else in the raid who can do more. You could try demosac but I doubt it can match destro's numbers for orb damage.

[Deleted]

I tried out GoSup a couple of times, but in my experience (even with imp) you can get more damage on the balls with the extra Chaos bolt dot/shadowburn damage.

You are doing the right thing with backdraft stacking for the balls - I usually don't have a problem getting 3 Chaos bolts into the ball and then just spamming shadowburn for the chance of getting one off before it dies.

Two pointers I would add in that I found helpful:
1. Take mannoroths and cover the area between the boss and the balls for ember gen (great help in P2)
2. I personally use my havoc for the lightning add and shadowburn for the free embers.

[Chrispotter]

This is actually what I'm reforged into, since my main spec is demonology. So no arguing here.
But how come you'd recommend going with GoSac instead of GoSup? What's the point?

---------- Post added 2013-06-17 at 11:38 PM ----------



1x prot pala

1x disc priest
1x heal shaman
1x heal druid

1x arcane mage (no meta gem!)
1x sv hunter (no meta gem!)
1x boomkin (no meta gem!)
1x destro warlock
1x unholy dk
1x enhancement shaman
even though some don't have the meta gem, their ilvl itself isn't bad at all (530 at least)

Have you ever read the GoSac Tooltip? xD
More damage on Shadowburn and your Chaos bolts is the main reason to take it for Ra Den . In 25 man at least, in current gear levels, the only thing that matters is the orbs dieing in time, boss damage should not be too much of an issue.

[Deleted]

Have you ever read the GoSac Tooltip? xD
More damage on Shadowburn and your Chaos bolts is the main reason to take it for Ra Den . In 25 man at least, in current gear levels, the only thing that matters is the orbs dieing in time, boss damage should not be too much of an issue.

Haha
Don't get me wrong, I do know what advantages GoSac provides. I was just wondering if it wasn't too big of a dps loss on the boss, if I switched to GoSac. Especially since most of the times I don't get to Shadowburn the adds when they die and I didn't think of the CB bonus to be that good.
But why not, I might give it a try.

[Deleted]

1. Not really
2. No, full crit is definitely not worth it. Reforging mastery over haste is though.
3. First off, playing with only 4 ranged is making things pretty hard on yourself. If there is any way to swap a melee for a good ranged (destrolock, arcance mage, spriest) it might very well be worth it, even if it's a lesser geared alt.
4. If you have to. The balls dieing in time is the only thing that matters as far as DPS goes, unless you have really really low damage output on the boss. I don't think it's possible you killed Lei Shen if your DPs would be THAT bad.
5. As others have said, try to make sure you have 1 ranged out to soak the debuff at at time. So make sure your order is ranged -> healer -> ranged -> melee etc.

[Deleted]

Just killed it myself last night and here are some of my thoughts:

Sac is not worth it. Supremacy, stationed 100% on the boss just yields too much damage to pass up. I went mastery gemmed / haste reforged (played demo on lei shen and havent bothered regemming). End result is the same, about even mastery~haste.

Essence of anima (and corrupted anima in P2) have 3.8 million hp. Our ranged setup was destro-arcane-2Xboomkins, our melees were WW monk (OS tank), Frost DK and Assassination rogue.

I personally see no reason to 3 heal this encounter. Damage in P1 is trivial (to a point), smart use of raid/personal cooldowns for each soak is needed. P2 you just need to stagger raidcds properly. Then again we do have 2 boomkins, and nature's vigil with full chicken-HAMmode is just crazy healing ^^. But enhancement (ridiculous healing!), boomkin (already stated silly healing with CDs) and another hybrid dps, assuming the shaman, druid or priest can dps, I really see no reason whatsoever to 3 heal it.

But yea, to my original point, if your guild is counting on you to pretty much global the adds then youre doing it wrong. 3,8m hp, and melees *need* to help out on them. Make sure people save shortduration procs a few seconds before ra'den summons the adds: arcane missiles proc, starsurge procs, even LnL procs (not actually sure how good LnL is nowadays) - if they proc ~5 seconds before the add is going to spawn, dont use them on the boss.

[Deleted]

Sac is not worth it. Supremacy, stationed 100% on the boss just yields too much damage to pass up. I went mastery gemmed / haste reforged (played demo on lei shen and havent bothered regemming). End result is the same, about even mastery~haste.

At this stage the only dps check to this boss will be the ball dps - boss dps shouldn't really matter. We should concentrate on being #1 on ball/add damage. As I said, in my experience (might work out differently for itemisation/gearing) Sac gives us more reliable damage on these.

[Deleted]

At this stage the only dps check to this boss will be the ball dps - boss dps shouldn't really matter. We should concentrate on being #1 on ball/add damage. As I said, in my experience (might work out differently for itemisation/gearing) Sac gives us more reliable damage on these.

Different strokes for different folks. Might be raidcomp, individual dps or whatnot, but the majority of the times we wiped due to lacking balldamage was when I (and at times the dps before me in vita-soaking order) was out of range of the orb, where Sac would do nothing. A better warlock than me would've of course made sure to send the imp at it, but alas I never did. I understand Sac lets you top balldamage easily, but at the end of the day you still want to dps the boss as much as possible. Im sure, with better gear overall in the raid we could probably just not have the melees hit it at all, and there i would definitely agree with you that Sac would be better.

My point can easiest be summarized as: if youre having real issues with balldamage, someone/alot of people are doing something very wrong - and counting on the warlock to carry balldamage feels a bit iffy when other classes can do 'ok' as well.

---------- Post added 2013-06-19 at 01:31 PM ----------

Just to note - I did play Sac for a majority of our attempts, but I just didnt like my low'ish dps, and when we didnt screw up with something royally, the adds would die well in time. Maybe im just spoiled with two very good boomkins shredding them with starsurge procs.